A Winter Feast

It is a typical mid January Vancouver morning…because of the rain it seems 2 hours earlier than the nearly 11 a.m. it actually is.

Last night my family gathered at my daughter Chaya’s new apartment to celebrate her successful landing and to finally have the traditional Christmas dinner we all missed this year.

I met my daughter Nika after work at her office and we walked together in the chilly early dusk, over the Cambie Street Bridge to the family-housing complex where Chaya and Kadir (my youngest) now live.

Chaya doesn’t have a landline and so no door buzzer and Nika had to announce our presence with her cell phone. Her older sister came skipping downstairs to open the door and greet us with big hugs.

She then led us to and proudly displayed her new digs, which she has touched up with fresh paint and a few new furnishings. It is great to see her in her element again, as the communal situation in their last place was not exactly comfortable, nor was it her space.

It is still a work in progress. Both she and Kadir now have their own separate rooms and Kadir’s is simply set up with a computer and desk, a nice big bed, and his new guitar and amp standing in the corner. She couldn’t show me hers, as she gave Kadir their only working bedroom light.

Chaya then returned to the kitchen where she and her mom were cooking up a feast, and I tried to engage Kadir in some conversation. But for this 13 year old, dad’s well meant efforts quickly caused noncommittal monosyllabic shrugs and grunts, rollings upwards of the eyes, deep and exasperated sighs and finally a plaintive moaned appeal, “Quit asking so many questions”.

Point taken! But just as I was giving up and turning away, Kadir caught my attention by extending his arm towards me and opening and closing his fingers in a snapping gesture that could only be translated as “pay up!” The subject of his allowance was the one topic he was willing to discuss.

When my older son Ky arrived straight from work, he gave me a big hug and was quick to answer my questions about how his day had gone. This was a refreshing turn of energy for me and I noticed Kadir quietly observing this.

It is amazing how a few years can change a child’s perspective completely. When my daughters were Kadir’s age, they were reluctant to talk to me either and tended to be embarrassed by any effusiveness from dad.

The dinner erased any tensions that had developed in the early part of the evening. This would be the first home cooked dinner in nearly 2 years where all of us were present.

We sat around the table, linked our hands and I led a very short blessing of the food. My kids are still a bit skeptical of this ritual, but put up with it for dad’s sake when we are together. It is a continuing attempt by me of passing along a glimpse of my decades of religious training without the dogma of formal religion. I hope that years from now they will remember this is a good way.

My blessing last night consisted of the words, “Thank you for these gifts,” to which and to my pleasant surprise Nika added the word, “Amen.”

The dinner was fabulous and afterwards we settled down to watch a 2-hour episode of this season’s American Idol. I couldn’t take the second hour of the hilarious but excruciatingly bad singing and so Nika and I bundled up for a walk back home along the Cambie Bridge in the pouring rain, as we are now nearly next-door neighbors in the West End.

We put up our hoods against the weather and hiked up 6 or 7 tiers of spiral stairs in the pelting elements, to the east sidewalk of the bridge and from there made our way to Pacific Boulevard. Nika suggested taking the seawall route back, but it was simply raining to hard and it was too cold to be able to enjoy any kind of stroll.

We both had work the next day and it was the vision of entering my own warm apartment after I had accompanied Nika home that kept me smiling and talking through the cold rain.